"Splaaaash~~"
With a crisp rush of water, Lorne surfaced from a hundred meters beneath the sea, holding Little Medusa in his arms. His eyes scanned the former battlefield above the waves.
What met his gaze was devastation—
Over a dozen Minosian warships had been cleaved in half, their shattered wreckage aflame and billowing smoke as it slowly sank.
Dozens of divine-blooded Royal Guards who had survived the onslaught were now navigating the few intact vessels left, searching the waters for their fallen comrades.
But whether it was ships, or people, what remained was a bleak third of what there had been.
Similarly, the situation on Crete was no better—riddled with scars.
The painstakingly constructed coastal defense line looked like a pile of toy blocks scattered by a reckless child.
Several massive breaches cut all the way through from the outer edges to the island's very heart.
Charred soil mixed with blood-matted human remains painted a portrait of hell.
Crying and wails echoed from the towns within, swept up by the blast—
And chaos spread uncontrollably.
Humanity was utterly defeated.
Yet when his gaze returned to the sea, it was clear the beast tide hadn't exactly come out victorious either.
The floating remains, mangled limbs and shredded meat, were not just the result of human casualties.
A greater portion came from the sea beasts themselves.
Severed Lamia torsos, scorched Sirens, and all manner of nameless monsters blanketed the sea's surface.
Even Scylla, unable to escape in time, had two heads and three tentacle-legs blasted clean off.
She now writhed through the water with a mutilated body, bleeding out in waves as she desperately fled from the battlefield.
"Hiss~!"
Lorne glanced at the miserable state of the deep-sea abomination and turned his eyes to the half-serpent, half-fish leviathan glowing with swirling light-runes as a shiver involuntarily ran down his spine.
No wonder the Siren Sisters had fled without a second thought...
No wonder the sea beast tide from the depths of Oceanus had never dared to awaken their common mother…
This so-called Mother of Monster was nothing less than a walking area-of-effect annihilation machine!
As the literal embodiment of maritime calamity, this thing's mind was almost entirely consumed by chaos and slaughter.
Once awakened, she showed no mercy to anyone, not even her kin or children.
Provoke her, and she'd erase you all the same.
Scylla's current fate was proof enough.
Faced with such an uncontrollable nightmare, it wasn't just the humans who quailed, the beast tide itself was terrified.
This was why the Siren Sisters had been singing from atop that whale—
Not just to command the beast tide from the center of the formation, but also to soothe the slumbering Mother of Monsters beneath them, keeping her quiet and content, functioning only as the central nervous system of the army.
But the unexpected twist no one on Crete had foreseen ended up backing the sea beasts, who held absolute advantage, into a corner.
When King Minos led a strike force of divine-blooded guards and tore through the blockade, charging straight at them with killing intent, the survival-focused Siren Sisters panicked.
Without hesitation, they forcibly awakened their "ace-in-the-hole," then turned tail and fled, selling out the very kin they had dragged up from the depths of the Oceanus Sea.
As for the outcome?
Lorne figured… not just the humans, even the sea beasts were probably cursing them to hell right now.
"His Majesty! It's His Majesty!"
At that moment, accompanied by stifled cheers, several Minosian warships conducting rescue operations hauled a battered and hunched figure from the blood-drenched waters, surrounded by drifting corpses.
"Cough, cough…"
Just as he stepped onto the deck, King Minos groaned awake, coughing violently.
Each breath sent dull, rattling pain through his lungs and chest.
Cold sweat streamed down his bloodless face.
He couldn't even sit up without help and someone had to support him just to keep him upright.
As an old-generation demigod and direct son of Zeus, he had managed to survive Ceto's area-of-effect onslaught thanks to his powerful instincts and battle-hardened will.
But there was no question, confronting a primeval sea demon head-on had left him severely wounded internally.
He had completely lost the ability to fight.
"Why haven't you started retreating yet?!"
High above, Lorne fired another golden arrow, piercing a rampaging demigod sea monster that had charged toward the ships and shouted a warning:
"The battle's over! Retreat—now!
That sea god doesn't care what species or side you're on!"
The battlefield had already reached a point where continuing to fight the beast tide served no purpose.
Ceto didn't distinguish friend from foe.
At this point, survival was the only priority.
As he spoke, Lorne and Little Medusa moved to opposite flanks, instinctively coordinating to clear a path through the chaotic sea.
Having pushed too deep into enemy lines, this elite Minosian fleet was now hopelessly entangled within the beast tide.
And ironically, the fleeing sea beasts, now mindless and panicked, became the greatest obstacle to their escape.
"Go!"
By now, King Minos had no more room for hesitation.
He wiped a smear of golden blood from the corner of his lips and squeezed out the order through gritted teeth.
The divine-blooded Royal Guard, given full authority, abandoned all pretense of formality.
They immediately unfurled the sails, rowing in unison to steer the battered warships away from the battlefield at maximum speed.
However, the awakened Ceto clearly had no intention of letting these noisy little things escape so easily—
Be they beast or human.
"ROARRR!!"
A thunderous roar, part beast and part serpent, echoed from behind.
The abyssal maw lined with ringed saw-like teeth began to inhale violently, creating a massive vacuum vortex across the sea.
Instantly, seawater, floating corpses, ambient ether in the air, and even thousands of fleeing sea beasts were sucked toward that gaping abyss, all becoming food for the Mother of Monsters.
And the Minosian warships, still turning and trying to flee, were now caught in the swirling backflow and the air current, dragged helplessly toward the open mouth behind them.
Despite the surviving Royal Guards rowing with all their might, the ships wouldn't budge an inch forward.
As the abyssal maw loomed closer behind them, panic seized their hearts.
In that moment of crisis, Little Medusa abandoned the flailing sea beasts in front of her and spun around, metal wings flaring with force.
"Fwoosh! Fwoosh!"
Dozens of bronze-feathered arrows, shaped like owl wings, shot through the air, peppering the surface of Ceto's massive head, trying to disrupt her feeding.
But to a beast of such monstrous scale and defense, the damage was no more than mosquito bites.
She didn't even bother swatting them away.
"Fsssh!"
Then—
A single streak of golden light, hidden among the bronze feathers, struck true, transforming midair into a blinding thunderbolt and piercing one of Ceto's compound eyes.
In a flash, dark-golden ichor burst from the ruptured eye socket.
Agonized by the pain, Ceto let out a pained and furious howl.
"RAHHHH!!"
The previously reversed sea current was violently expelled from her maw.
Seizing the chance, the Minosian fleet finally broke free from her pull and surged toward the coast.
At that moment, Lorne, who had just fired the golden arrow, felt a wave of soreness wash through his arm.
He flexed it slightly and muttered to himself as he watched the fleet escape.
No doubt about it—
That's a real god. Tough as hell.
If it hadn't been for the anti-armor attribute on his weapon, Lorne honestly wouldn't have known how to even begin dealing with the Mother of Monsters, who had the body of a tank and the lethality of an assassin.
But as his eyes lowered to the quiver, where only nine golden arrows remained, then drifted back to the rampaging, seemingly unscathed Ceto on the sea—
His face darkened even further.
Clearly, as a token gift to a lover, Zeus hadn't exactly handed Europa anything top-tier.
The golden arrows could hurt, yes, but not by much.
This thing might be used to deal with demigods, and it might be able to kill one with one arrow, but it was obviously not enough to face real gods.
Then again… perhaps Zeus never intended for his son to possess weapons capable of threatening the divine.
After all, that man was shrewd to the bone.
"Vmmmm—"
Just as Lorne sank into thought, a familiar, horrifying etheric resonance rang out from behind him, making his scalp go numb.
He whipped around—
And saw Ceto's body lighting up again, one after another, with overlapping halos.
Each radiant ring spun in place, drawing in surging magic to form vortexes of raw power.
It's starting again!
The horrific scene from before resurfaced in everyone's mind.
The survivors instinctively shivered and began scrambling to flee this cursed sea.
But in the face of those blinding sigils—stretching for miles—running was little more than a futile struggle.
"Shhhk-shhhk-shhhk!"
Countless beams of light once again screamed across the sea, slicing forward with deadly precision as a rainbow of color surged, swallowing everything in its path.
"VMMM!"
Yet—
Just as that unstoppable divine might surged forth, it was abruptly halted—
By a blaze of golden fire rising from the coastline.
Midair, Lorne paused, still gripping Little Medusa, ready to dive, but now transfixed by that sun-like glow.
No, not the sun.
But the man bathed in golden flames.
An old man, alone, stood upright upon the sea, straightening his hunchbacked frame. Gold-tinged divine blood surged from every pore, igniting into radiant fire.
It was godly ichor—
Burning away to defend the last stronghold of mortals.
The coastal defenses were already in tatters.
If Crete took another direct blast, the walls would fall, and the entire island might shatter and sink into the sea.
So he couldn't falter.
He couldn't take a single step back.
Even so, no matter how brightly the ichor burned, the chasm between demigod and god remained unbridgeable.
That golden flame, no matter how valiant, was still only the dying glow of a setting sun.
"Shhhk!"
A streak of golden light zipped over King Minos's head, striking Ceto squarely between the eyes.
It burst with explosive force, blasting flesh and blood from her enormous skull.
"RRAHHH!!"
The Mother of Monsters let out a roar of pain, and her divine power surged outward in a wild torrent.
The swirling halos around her grew ever brighter, overlapping until they painted the sea in searing light.
By contrast, the golden flames across the water, Minos's last stand, flickered violently, like a candle in the wind… threatening to go out at any second.
"Hold on! Ten seconds—just give me ten!"
A calm voice came from behind.
The silver-haired figure who had earlier turned away from the battlefield—
Had stopped.
And drawn a second golden arrow.
He pulled the bowstring taut, golden power coiling into it like lightning.
"Got it!"
King Minos nodded without hesitation, and instead of retreating, he advanced. A thicker golden blood mist gushed out of his pores, turning into burning firewood, and forcibly resisted the power of the gods from the front.
"Shhhk!"
The second arrow flew—
And once again, it hit its mark.
A burst of golden light erupted across Ceto's mountainous body, spraying ichor in waves.
Under the sting, Ceto's body trembled before she thrashed with even greater fury, her serpentine head and tail whipping the sea into violent swells. The golden blaze holding the line dimmed under the pressure.
Lorne's face was expressionless as he stared ahead.
And nocked a third arrow.
Then the fourth.
The fifth.
The sixth...
By the time the eighth golden arrow struck true, Lorne reached into his quiver for the very last one.
Beside him, Little Medusa, with her face pale as paper, bit her cherry lips and, as before, slit her left wrist as drops of dark-golden divine blood fell into the small clay vial affixed beneath the arrowhead, which she then sealed with a protective charm.
Gorgon's blood—
Poison on the left, antidote on the right.
They didn't know how effective it would be against the Mother of Monsters, but at this point, it was the only desperate gamble they had left.
If memory served, Ceto's divinity should be vulnerable to a gorgon's curse.
As he waited, Lorne narrowed his eyes at Ceto's mutilated skull.
The eight golden arrows he'd fired earlier were embedded deep in her flesh, fixed in a precise formation.
Together, they outlined a Hermesian sigil—
The glyph for Explosion.
But one stroke was missing.
The final stroke.
Lorne grasped the last golden arrow, now infused with Gorgon's venom, and inhaled deeply as he gathered the last dregs of divine power within him, and with glowing halos reflected in his eyes, pulled the bowstring to its absolute limit and let fly.
"Shhkk!"
The arrow tore through the air, slicing clean through the fading veil of golden flame, bypassing the dense rain of radiant beams, and landed squarely at the last open point of the glyph traced by the eight arrows.
Hit.
On the battlefield, Little Medusa saw it land with precision.
She clenched her fists in joy and screamed excitedly in her heart.
"BOOM!"
The final arrow struck Ceto's skull, and a powerful shockwave erupted, triggering a chain reaction—
All eight golden arrows detonated in unison.
The clay vials they carried burst open, spraying dark-golden Gorgon blood into the air. The venom seeped into Ceto's wounds, directly invading her body.
The massive Mother of Monsters, who had just been wreaking havoc, shuddered violently as if struck by divine lightning.
Patches of her slimy flesh turned ashen gray, then cracked and sloughed off in clumps.
"RRAAAOOO~~~!"
Ceto couldn't help but let out a howl of agony.
She instantly scattered the halos gathered around her body and, without a second thought, dove into the deep sea and vanished beneath the crashing waves.
"We won! We won!"
Looking at the giant monsters on the sea fleeing in panic, the soldiers and priests who had survived the siege broke into tears and deafening cheers.
No—
Not yet.
That thing was far too resilient.
Even after taking a full volley of Gorgon venom-laced golden arrows head-on, she had fled alive, intending to let the sea wash the toxins from her flesh.
The wound had only forced her to retreat, not killed her.
Should we pursue?
Lorne hesitated, glancing back at Little Medusa, who was pale from blood loss, and at King Minos, now tumbling toward the ocean, his divine fire flickering.
"Grandfather! Let me help you!"
Just as Lorne wavered, a thunderous voice rang out from the coast.
A towering young man, built like a small giant, clad in beast pelts and armed with a massive bow, burst from the forest and sprinted across the ocean as if it were solid ground, rushing toward the fleet.
Walking on water? Sea's blessing?
Lorne's eyes narrowed. Suspicion flickered across his face.
Is this guy really here to help?
Then, out of the corner of his eye, he caught a glimpse of a familiar old face twisted with fury.
And remembered what the youth had just called out.
Lorne raised a brow, something clicking into place.
"You two… know each other?"
At that moment, King Minos, dragged back aboard the ship by little Anna, gritted his teeth as he glared at the approaching oafish young man.
His voice was filled with venom.
"That is the bastard son of my unfilial daughter Euryale and the sea god Poseidon—Orion!"
(End of Chapter)